In the Beginning

      In the beginning, the Big Bang created the heavens and the earth.  Actually, that's false.  The heavens came about 400 million years after the Big Bang, and the earth came about 9.1 billion years after the Big Bang.  So the heavens and the earth did not even exist in the beginning at all.  Rather, they came about a very long time after the beginning. 

      Why bother with such trivial details?  There is an old expression, "the devil is in the details."  It is true.  Since the beginning, the Devil has always been in the details, as the Prophet says, "In the beginning, the Holy One spoke to the Devil."[1]  Therefore, since the Devil was in the beginning with God, the Devil has been in the details since the beginning.  This being the case, if we study the details of the beginning, then perhaps we can expose the Devil.  So, without further ado, let us examine the details of the beginning.

      "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."  So begins the first chapter of Genesis.  The Bible said it; therefore Jesus believes it – right?  Not necessarily.  Jesus Christ never quoted Genesis 1.  You can search the entirety of the gospels, and you will not find one single instance in which Jesus Christ directly quoted Genesis 1, nor did he ever unequivocally affirm its truth.  Some point to Mark 10:6-8 as a place where he did, but upon closer examination, Mark 10:6-8 is an affirmation of the second chapter of Genesis, and as such does not directly pertain to the first chapter of Genesis.[2]  So let's skip Genesis 1 for now and fast-forward to Genesis 2.

Adam and Eve and the Cave-People Too

      Adam and Eve had neighbors.  Their neighbors were cave-people who lived alongside them.  The Biblical storyline, starting in Genesis 2, implicitly alludes to these cave-people several times.  The term "cavemen" sounds primitively chauvinistic.  Therefore, in the spirit of political correctness, I have opted to use the term "cave-people" when referring to those brutish humans who evolved before us. 

      According to the interpretations of the creationists, no people existed before Adam and Eve.  Adam and Eve were the first humans.  Then, they had two sons – Cain and Abel.  Cain killed Abel.  At this point there supposedly were only three people on the face of the earth – Adam, Eve, and their son Cain.  However, the Biblical story makes a statement which implies other people existed at that time.  It says, "Yahweh put a mark on Cain, so that if anybody found him, they would not kill him."[3]  We must ask, why is the mark necessary?  If Adam and Eve were the only other two people on earth, then surely they would recognize their own son, right?  Why would God need to put a mark on him, so that people would recognize him? 

      On the other hand, if there were cave-people living alongside them, then it makes sense that God put a mark on Cain.  God wanted the cave-people to know not to kill him, so he put a mark on him, to distinguish him from the cave-people who lived outside the Garden.  In this light, the narrative flows logically, for if another group of people were living alongside them, then they might need to see a mark on Cain to know not to kill him, because otherwise they might not recognize him.

      After this, the Bible informs us that "Cain had sex with his wife."[4]  But where did his wife come from?  Creationists will tell you that Cain married his sister.  However, Genesis never actually says his wife was his sister.  That is only an assumption the creationists make, because they assume no humans existed before Adam and Eve. 

      The same verse continues, "He built a city."  At this point, according to the creationists, there were a very limited number of people on earth – only Adam and Eve and some unknown number children they had.  But now, Cain is building a city.  We must ask, where did Cain find enough people to fill a city?  Did Adam and Eve procreate like rabbits?  Or, on the other hand, was there a larger group of people unrelated to Adam and Eve, living alongside them, who could now live in cities thanks to Cain’s engineering skills?  The same narrative continues to describe how Cain’s descendents gave certain technologies to humanity such as tent-making, herding, musical instrumentation, and metallurgy.[5]  Does it make sense that Cain was the only child of Adam and Eve who was smart enough to make these technological advancements?  Or does it make better sense that he gave these skills to a more primitive type of human? 

      Further along in the story, Genesis mentions that Adam and Eve had another son.  His name was Seth.  About Seth, Genesis says,

Adam lived 130 years and begat a son in his own likeness, in his very image, and called his name Seth.[6]

This harkens back to the place in the same narrative where Adam was created in the likeness of God.

In the day that God created Adam, He made him in the likeness of God.[7]

The Bible continues, saying Seth also had a son.  But breaking the pattern, Seth's son is not in the image of his father.

      Seth lived 105 years and begat Enosh.[8]

Notice how Adam and Seth are "made in the likeness" of their progenitor, but Enosh is not.  The implications are subtle, but very profound.  Adam is the son of God, therefore he looks like his father God, as it says "made in the likeness" of God.  Seth is the son of Adam, therefore he looks like his father Adam, as it says, "a son in his own likeness."  Enosh is the son of Seth, but nothing is said about Enosh being in the likeness of his father Seth.  It seems that Adam looked like his father God, Seth looked like his father Adam, but why doesn’t Enosh look like his father Seth?  One possible explanation is that Seth procreated with a woman from outside the Adamic line, and therefore Seth's son Enosh did not have his father's physical appearance.

      Moreover, the name "Enosh" is very telling, for it is the Hebrew word meaning "Mortal Man."  Why would someone name their kid "Mortal Man?" This question is especially appropriate when one considers the god-like life-spans recorded in Genesis 5, which regularly lasted nearly a thousand years.  Adam and Seth both lived over 900 years, according to Genesis 5, and nearly everyone in the first ten generations had similarly long life-spans.  Compared to the animals and cave-people, Adam and Eve and their kids must have felt like immortal gods.  In fact, certain early Christian texts, such as On the Origin of the World record that Eve was not really human at all, but rather she was some sort of luminous goddess-type creature.[9]  Perhaps Seth called his son "Mortal Man," because he had good reason to suspect that his son might someday perish.  If the cave-people had much shorter life-spans, and if Seth procreated with a cave-woman, then Seth would have known that his son was destined to die younger than himself.  Next, Genesis records that human life-spans began to decline toward 120 years – "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is now mortal.  His days will be 120 years."[10] 

      Then it says, "Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations."[11]  Could this mean that Noah and his pedigree refrained from mingling with the cave-people?  A casual glimpse at Genesis 5 reveals that the life spans of Noah’s ancestors did not decline to the stated 120 years.  Rather, they continued to live for about 900 years.  The statement that he was perfect in his generations, together with the continued long life spans despite God’s curse to reduce them to 120 years, suggests that Noah’s ancestors married mostly among their Adamic cousins, thus preserving their long life spans, even while other branches of the Adamic line mixed their blood with cave-people.  After the Flood, however, Noah’s children apparently married cave-people, for their life spans rapidly decline in Genesis 11:10-32. 

      Creationists will tell you that Adam and Eve’s kids married their brothers and sisters.  It was their only choice.  There was nobody else around.  Although the Bible never asserts that Adam and Eve’s children committed incest with each other, some creationists affirm it as surely as if they were there to witness it themselves.  By doing this, they create a theological problem for themselves, because the Bible condemns incest: 

If a man shall take his sister, his father’s daughter, or his mother’s daughter, and see her naked, and she sees him naked, it is a wicked thing; and they shall be cut off in the sight of their people.[12] 

If God said incest is "wickedness," then why would God create a situation where Adam and Eve’s kids had to commit incest with each other?  Did God force them to break His Law?  No, it makes much more sense that Adam and Eve's children procreated with other humans outside the family – the cave-people.

      Yet one may object, why aren’t these cave-people explicitly mentioned in Genesis?  Actually, they are, but they are called "animals."  Indeed, they were still animals – mere primitives descended from apes.  Genesis 2:18-22 tells us how God wanted Adam to have a partner, so He brought animals to Adam.  But none of the animals suited him, so Eve was created to be his partner instead of the animals.  Why is Eve compared to animals here?  Was God contemplating the possibility of a marriage between Adam and a goat, or Adam and a cow – only to realize later that a woman was more fitting?  As with the incest issue, the implicit mention of bestiality in Genesis causes a serious theological dilemma, because the Bible says, "You shall not have sex with an animal."[13] 

      However, if we take the "animals" to be cave-people, then the theological dilemma disappears.   The "animals" were primitive humans who had the nature of animals.  God wanted Adam to marry one of these cave-women, whom the Bible calls "animals," but Adam refused to do so, hoping he could marry a god-like human like himself, who lived a long time.  Adam was lucky.  He got Eve.  But Adam's son Seth procreated with a cave-woman, and that is why his son did not look like him, and why he was named Enosh – "Mortal Man." 

Early Christians Believed Humans Are a Type of Animal

      New archaeological discoveries have uncovered that many early Christians actually believed that we humans are just another kind of animal.  Consider some of the quotes from ancient Christian texts found at Nag Hammadi:

You follow after stupidity, but it is not yourself which does this, but rather the animal instincts inside of you.[14]

There were two trees in the Garden.  One brought about animals and the other brought about humans.  Man (Adam) chose the tree that brought about animals, so he turned into an animal and fathered animals.[15] 

You are flesh and have become like an animal.[16]

If your flesh is born from sexual activity, then how are you different from a wild animal?[17]

Don't associate with the animal nature.  An irrational animal can be noticed in people when you see someone who thinks they are rational but their speech is like an animal.[18]

Jesus said, "Do not consider them human, but consider them animals.  Just like animals kill and eat each other, there is a certain type of human that kills and eats other humans."[19]

Animal instincts will lead you to become a product of the earth.  However, reason will lead you to more logical ways of living.  Embrace reason, and pull yourself away from the instincts of Mother Earth.[20]

The Valentinians believed that there were three types of humans – spiritual, material, and animal.[21]

The Savior came to those of the animal nature who have free will, in order to save them.[22]

This is why Jesus said, "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,"[23] because the flesh evolved from weak-minded animals.  This is also why we should listen to the Prophets, because the wisdom of God is superior to the philosophies of stupid apes.

Is Genesis a True Story?

      So far, we have largely ignored Genesis 1, which has traditionally been the major sticking point between creationism and evolution.  Instead, we have concentrated on Genesis 2 through 6 – the story of Adam and Eve and their children.  There is nothing that directly contradicts evolutionary science in Genesis 2 through 6.  If these chapters stood alone, without Genesis 1, there would be no reason for an evolution-creation debate.  It is Genesis 1 that contradicts evolutionary science. 

      Of course, the fact that Genesis 2 through 6 can be made to harmonize with evolutionary science does not necessarily prove that the narrative is a true story.  Yet corroborating evidence for its truth does exist.  According to a legend told by the Apache Indians, the animals asked the Creator for a companion, and so the Creator made a man from clay and red pigmented materials such as iron and ocher.  Doesn’t this sound a lot like Genesis, where it says God made Adam out of dirt, and animals came forward to be his companions?[24]  The word "Adam" itself means "red," and refers to the color of the dirt in the land of Edom, which is a reddish brown color on account of its iron-rich soil.  Thus, both Genesis and the Apache Indians agree on something strikingly unpredictable – the created man was made from dirt, and the dirt was the color of iron, for in the Apache myth the Creator mixed the dirt with iron.  The Apache legend also says that the man needed another companion, so he fell asleep, and when he awoke, a young woman was beside him.[25]  Such is the Apache Adam and Eve. 

      This is not the only American Indian legend to correlate with Genesis.  Cheyenne folklore has it that the god Haemmawihio created man from his right rib and woman from his left rib.  Cherokee folklore speaks of the two sons of the first man and woman, Kanati and Selus, who lived in paradise, and of how one son was wild, and this brought about the temptation of the other son, causing the fall and the curse to work at hard labor all one's life.  This hearkens back to the Genesis story of the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, and of how Yahweh cursed the ground so that gathering food would be labor intensive.

      These are so similar to the story told in Genesis chapters 2 through 4 that we must ask if they are derived from a common source.  If they are, then we must also ask how two legends so geologically isolated from each other chanced upon this same information.  Was it given to them in two separate divine revelations – one in America and one in the Middle East?  Perhaps the story of Adam and Eve is more fact than fiction.